Lifetime Warranty

Wedelia and a Friend, Kailua, HI, March 2020, Panasonic DMC-ZS50,
1/200 sec @ f3.3, ISO 80, 0 EV, no flash © Steven Crisp  [Click on the photo to enlarge]

Do you ever check those warranties you get on products?  Some are only good for 90 days, some for 1 year.  But the great ones are lifetime warranties, good as long as the original owner is still alive.

Well, here's some good news.  We also come with a lifetime warranty.  On our Life.  The only requirement is we have to be alive to claim it.

Want more good news?  There's no paperwork required, no receipts you need to save.  Whenever Our Life is not working as it should be, we can swap it for a new one.  Really.  It's True!

So what's the catch, you may ask?  Who gets to determine if my life is working "as it should be"?  That's the best part -- We're the ones who get to make the call.  In fact we have to make the call, to claim the warranty.

So maybe an example would better explain how this warranty works.  Imagine you have a nice home in a nice neighborhood, outfitted with a nice security system to keep you safe.  But then your security system keeps sending you alerts of intruders in your driveway.  And it turns out to be neighborhood kids running amok, unable to stay on the public sidewalk.  Annoying, right?  They're not allowed on your property without your permission, right?  What are you going to do -- how will you handle the situation?  Well here's how one man dealt with it:

See how it works?  Once we decide we don't like what is happening in Our Life, we get to decide how to respond.  We could react with frustration, anger, bitterness, revenge -- all perfectly natural, automatic, ego-centric responses.  Then once we recognize how we are reacting, and if we don't like how that makes us feel, time to turn in our Old Life for a New Life.  Right Now.  In each new Moment.

That's right, we get to choose our response to everything that Life throws at us.  Both the "good" and the "bad", except those are really only defined by how we choose to respond to Life.  Really, it is that simple.

And this is not limited to precocious kids in your driveway.  This is about any situation that causes us to suffer.  Take for example, being incarcerated, locked up in prison, or worse.  Indeed, having survived 3 years in Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz, Victor Frankl famously wrote:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

That is our Lifetime Warranty.  And we get to use it over and over, each time we get trapped by our reaction to a situation.  We get to choose another path.  And over time, we will be able to sense that space that Frankl speaks of, and make a conscious choice of what our response will be to Life's stimulus.

We can choose a response that lifts our heart and soul, perhaps at the same time it lifts the other person's heart and soul as well, and helps heal ourself and the other.  

Please don't be shy.  This is powerful stuff.  We get to use our Lifetime Warranty over and over again, as many times as we need it, until we can live in that space, and make more heartfelt, compassionate, choices.

Oh, and how does that picture at the top of this page relate to any of this?  Well, Wedelia can be considered an invasive weed.  But it is also a very effective ground cover, holding on to the topsoil, providing beautiful flowers, supporting local honey bees and various other insects, as you can see.  Did you notice that little fella there, looking you right in the eye?  Is that a pest?  Or another sentient being?

Sometimes, Life is really all about how We choose to see things.  And whether we judge, label, and call something good or bad.  Just realize it is Us, and not Life, that assigns those labels.  With some practice, we really can find Reflections of Beauty everywhere we go.